Charles Ramsey and the troubling trend of the "hilarious" black neighbor (Column)

By Aisha Harris, Slate

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It's hardly surprising -- the interviews he gave Tuesday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites ("I was eatin' my McDonald's") and lots of enthusiastic gestures.

But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted on BlackBook, Ramsey's heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public's desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that's a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of "hilarious" black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a "colorful" style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson's rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn't fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became "the next Sweet Brown."

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things.

One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a "hatchet-wielding hitchhiker" named Kai matched Dodson's fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker.

But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark and now, perhaps, Ramsey -- the inescapable echoes of "Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife!" and "Kabooyaw," the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It's difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the "ghetto," socially out of step with the rest of educated America.

Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, "I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!"

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it's notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most.

Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.